Uh oh.
I don't really have anything more than a general outline of how Showtime, AMC, etc, would do
Star Trek, just by looking at what series they tend to do, and matching that up with
Star Trek's strengths and "core values."
I usually get impatient with folks who start to describe the series they have in mind in great detail, because I don't think the details are all that important - what century it's in, what the spaceship looks like, if it follows the Prime or Abrams U, or even if you'd be able to tell.
But here are some additional general-scope thoughts about what the series should or shouldn't be:
1. Go back to the basics: Starfleet vessel, going boldly.
2. And part of the basics of TOS (which tends to get forgotten a lot) is that it's not just about exploration, or even mainly about exploration. Kirk & co spent a lot of time playing space cop, patrolling far-flung Federation outposts; playing space soldier, defending the Federation from attack; and participating in Federation politics and diplomacy.
Add in the space-virus-attacks stories and the personal stories of the characters, and only a minority of episodes are left over for actual exploration. And even then, there was often an agenda: not exploring for its own sake, but exploring to suss out promising new Federation member worlds.
This means, they weren't out in the wilds of the galaxy on their own. They were perched the edge of the frontier, with the Federation always nearby and exerting a serious gravitational force. But the stories are not about the Federation - we know next to nothing about it, not its politics or its culture, or the day to day lives of its citizens. It's just a big, utopian black hole, some Ideal Thing that provides a blanket justification for Starfleet's existence.
So this means the show has to strike that precarious TOS balance, of the Federation being absolutely central to everything, yet always being in the background and never the direct topic of stories.
For whatever reason, this element has been dropped by the sequel series. DS9 kept the space soldier element, but the space cop/diplomat/recruiter for the Federation angle has been sadly forgotten. This is the part of TOS that could be expanded to create complex semi-serialized stories that I think could appeal to the demanding cable audience.
3. Assume that the audience is a) the viewers of the channel you're on and b) people who liked Abrams' movies (probably plural by the time the series premieres). Any
Star Trek fans of older vintage who are still paying attention will check out anything with the
Star Trek name, if only to bitch about it. No need to go to special efforts to attract them.
This means that if you can get one of the movie actors (Quinto would be great) to show up for the premiere episode, grab him! That would place the series in the Abrams U, but there's no particular reason for it to be there, other than that it's a for the PR value of having one of the movie actors in the premiere.
There's the possibility of having one of the movie actors as a regular character - John Cho as Sulu for instance. Or, Quinto might be lured back to TV (he's got a guest or possibly recurring role on
American Horror Story now.) The main problem there is that the appeal of the TOS characters lies so much in the ensemble. I'm not sure I'm thrilled about breaking up the band. I think I'd prefer them as guest stars.
4. Adapting
Star Trek to a cable audience, now here is where things get tricky. There will need to be more sex (does not need to be particularly graphic) and violence (this is where things can and should be significantly more graphic - Starfleet is a dangerous job). No swearing, simply because swearing has vanished from humanity's lexicon by the 23rd C. If the series is set in the 22nd C, I guess the language can be saltier.
The bigger issue than sex, violence and swearing is matching the sanitized
Star Trek style with the more sophisticated expectations of the cable audience, which has become accustomed to seeing antiheroes as main characters. I can't envision anyone remotely like Dexter Morgan or Walter White in Starfleet. Raylan Givens of
Justified - maaaaybe. If Starfleet were a little asleep at the switch when they let him through the psychological screening. Yeah I could see that happening.
It would be tempting to think about what might happen if a guy like that got command of a big, dangerous starship, and was crafty enough to never let the bureaucrats back home realize what a loose cannon he was by always toeing the Starfleet party line in public. I'm envisioning Sisko on steroids. If he were a charismatic leader, he could get his crew on his side by rationalizing everything he does, which would never be blatantly "wrong." It would be easy for the writers to create one tricky, ambiguous situation after another.
Just refrain from the usual routine of writing the story to let the noble Starfleet captain avoid having to choose between Bad and Worse. Replace it with a cosmos in which you could never see a Picard type lecturing the Obviously Wrong Aliens of the Week and then flying away, secure in his moral uprightness. That silly, superficial aspect of
Star Trek does not fit cable at all. It would have to be completely excised, and good riddance.
You'll step on a few toes, both the fanboys who define the franchise solely by the sanitized standards of network TV, where
Star Trek can no longer exist, and the cable audience who will think a story about an idealistic future is always going to be too hokey for their oh so jaded tastes. But there will be plenty of people in the middle who might love a show like that.
Another way to go is to keep the noble, upstanding Starfleet captain and throw a lot of horrible shit at him. Now I'm thinking of a different southern sheriff: Rick Grimes of
The Walking Dead. He's straight-up Starfleet material, but the show keeps the gritty cable approach by having a horrific situation that creates more than enough drama.
This scenario would fit best in the 25th C or beyond, so that we could have an unprecedented catastrophe that occurs outside the established timeline. The Borg would be a tempting stand-in for the zombies, as long as they are treated with more respect than they were on VOY. Or, the threat could be something else.
You could have a BSG-style scenario with a Starfleet captain picking up survivors of some disaster, maybe a war breaks out and they're on the wrong side of the fighting. Or, one (or more) vessels blunder into a parallel universe that is significantly nastier than the MU (I'm thinking
The Mist now).
5. Business issues: a glitzy space opera is going to be pricey on TV, but if we can have a fancy show about dinosaurs premiering on FOX, I don't see why space opera is outside any potential budget.
Star Trek is a well known international brand name and sci fi TV does well overseas, which suggests the possibility of co-financing with an overseas partner that expects to do very well with a new
Star Trek series.
Showtime might appreciate the unique ability of the
Star Trek brand to attract new subscribers. There are few brands out there that would have more ability to get large numbers of fans to pay $20/month, even in this economy.
